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It’s Giving Tuesday, an internationally recognized day for charitable contributionss. Vox senior correspondent Dylan Matthews routinely gives 10 percent of his pretax income to an effective charity that saves lives — and he wants to encourage you to do the same. 

If you can’t part with 10 percent of your income, that’s understandable. For the average American household, which has an income of roughly $80,000, that’s an $8,000 commitment. But even 1 to 5 percent of your income would still make a difference; $800 a year would be enough to save a life approximately every six years. 

Over the years, Dylan has gotten inquiries about his charity strategy and ethos, which he believes can have a significantly positive impact on global health. Here’s his advice on how best to give away your money, and how to do it in a cost-effective way that can make real change.

—Melinda Fakuade, staff editor, culture and features

I give my 10 percent to GiveWell’s top charities fund, which redistributes it to highly effective global health charities like the Malaria Consortium and Helen Keller International. GiveWell estimates that for every $5,000 gift, these charities will save one human life.

I think of GiveWell as the charity version of an index fund: It’s a rigorous, impartial recommender that you can donate to without having to pick and choose individual causes. It has also been, disclosure, an advertiser on Vox Media podcasts, though I’ve been using it since long before that was true.

The practice of tithing in many world religions is a key inspiration here. The twist is I’m suggesting tithing not to religious institutions but to highly effective charities (which could be religious or not — it’s not their beliefs that matter, but their effectiveness).

Actually, the vast majority of nonprofits see widely variable effectiveness. In global development, something like 60 to 70 percent of interventions tested show no results at all.

But the best interventions are much, much better than the average interventions. The most cost-effective treatments examined by Britain’s National Health Service were 120 times more effective than the median treatment. A World Bank study found the most effective interventions in global health were 38 times more effective than the median ones.

Charities are like chef’s knives. The difference between the best and worst knife is enormous and affects the entire process of cooking. It’s the difference between an enjoyable time in the kitchen versus pure drudgery (and a heightened chance you inadvertently chop off your fingertip).

Because it lets you do a lot more good. Suppose you’re giving $8,000 a year. If you gave that to an average global health program, you’d be providing 30 more total years of healthy life to a few people, per the World Bank data.

That’s great. But if you put that money toward one of the 2.5 percent most cost-effective interventions, you’d save about 1,275 years of life.

Now, these are rough numbers and you shouldn’t take them too literally. You might merely save hundreds of years of life. But there’s a reason the philosopher Toby Ord, who originated the “10 percent of income to effective charities” pledge idea, has argued that cost-effectiveness is a moral imperative, on par with the moral imperative to give money at all.

The US has extreme poverty, but it’s comparatively rare and hard to target effectively. The poorest Americans also have access to health care and education systems that, while obviously inferior compared to those enjoyed by rich Americans, are still superior to those of very poor countries.

To be blunt: People in the US simply are not dying for want of a $1.50 anti-malaria pill. That means it is much, much more cost-effective to help people abroad. 

It sounds like it because it is. Benjamin Todd and Toby Ord were among the founders of effective altruism.

And yes, Sam Bankman-Fried and several of his colleagues at FTX and Alameda Research identified as EAs, and stated that they were only becoming billionaires to donate the proceeds. 

They turned out to be stealing lots of money and Bankman-Fried has since been convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. (Disclosure: In August 2022, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded Vox’s Future Perfect a grant for a 2023 reporting project. That project was canceled.)

Because they’re good ideas and they’re in danger of being totally discredited because of some effective altruists who didn’t even take the “donate a lot of your income to normal charities that save lives” philosophy seriously.

You have the opportunity to save lives, right now, and you should take it.

I don’t think you’re “obligated.” I just think it’s a good thing to do and that you should consider it. If everyone did it, we could end global poverty and then some. 

Do you ever wonder if your life has meaning? If it makes any kind of difference to the world? Personally, I want to live a life that means something, that leaves things ever so slightly better than I found them. 

I want to be pursuing goals that aren’t just material. I don’t want to mark the progression of my life solely through raises and promotions, or fall victim to the subtle pressures that push me to spend more and more of my money on gadgets and furniture that make me progressively less happy.

If nothing else, I know that the money I make through my job contributes to saving people’s lives. That’s a source of real meaning and pride.

The group Giving What We Can runs a pledge, which I and thousands of others have signed, for people who commit to donating 10 percent of their income to highly effective charities. You can sign if you want. 

But the main thing to do is just give.

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Today’s edition was produced and edited by staff editor Melinda Fakuade. We'll see you tomorrow!

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